CNH’s primary purpose is to ensure that all of the housing stock reaches the Decent Home Standard using Government funding which is only available to ALMOs who can achieve a two star inspection rating from the Audit Commission’s Housing Inspectorate.

Since CNH was established in December 2007, the Board and staff have been working hard to make improvements on our performance and the services we provide to you. We have responded to your feedback and the advice the inspectors gave when the Council’s housing service was inspected in 2006.

What is the Housing Inspectorate?
The Housing Inspectorate is part of the Audit Commission, the independent body whose job is to make sure that public money is spent efficiently and effectively.

The Housing Inspectorate inspects local housing authorities and housing associations to make sure they provide quality services on a cost effective basis to their tenants, leaseholders and the wider community.

When is the inspection happening?
CNH will be inspected by the Audit Commission for 8 days from 8th February 2010. From November onwards they will be using many ways to check on our performance including mystery shopping our services. In February, they will visit and will, interviewing staff and of course talking to our customers.

What will the Inspectors do?
The inspectors look at the quality of the service provided to tenants and leaseholders. During this inspection, they will be looking at:

• Stock investment, asset management and repairs and maintenance – how is our progress on getting Decent Homes work completed and is our repairs service improving?
• Income management – how good are we at managing our income from rent and service charges and making sure people pay their bills on time.
• Customer involvement – do we involve residents in decisions that affect them?
• Tenancy management – issues such as anti-social behaviour and how we respond to the needs of our customers.
• Estate services - is our service to maintain estates good enough?
• Allocations and lettings - looking at letting process and how the Council and we look after new tenants.
• Supported and sheltered housing - do our residents receive an effective housing and support service?
• Leasehold management – do we provide a good service to leaseholders?
• Access to service - how easy is it for people to access our service, for example are our offices open at times our customers want to visit?
• Diversity - are we tailoring our service to the needs of all our customers?
• Value for money – how good are we at investing our resources, making savings when services are inefficient and investing the money back into frontline services.

They will make two judgements about these services:

• How good our service is; and
• What our prospects for improvement are.

What is involved?
During the inspection the inspectors will:

• Review our self assessment document detailing our view of the services we provide. Click here to read more.
• Visit estates and sheltered schemes to talk to our customers about all sorts of things we do.
• Meet groups of customers to discuss a particular service in depth.
• Meet with tenant and resident associations.
• Meet with tenant and leaseholder board members.
• Spend time at our offices observing how staff deal with enquiries and requests for assistance.
• Talk to staff at all levels to check out their understanding of our service standards.
• Meet with other organisations that we work with, such as Charnwood Borough Council, our key service delivery partners, police, advice agencies and so on.
• Meet individual customers who have recently received a service from us, for example a new customer or someone who has recently had a repair carried out on their home. These customers will be chosen by the inspection team, not by us, to make sure it’s fair.

The inspection team chooses the customers they would like to speak to at random. If the inspection team would like to speak to you during the inspection they will let you know. All members of the inspection team carry identification. Please note that inspectors cannot deal with individual complaints. If you have a complaint about one of services, please use our customer complaints procedure.

What will the inspection mean for CNH tenants?
CNH is aiming for a two star inspection result – this will mean a funding boost of at least £36m which will be used to bring all homes up to the Decent Homes government standard.

Click here for more information about Decent Homes funding.

Following the two-week inspection, the Audit Commission will put together a report which highlights the strengths of CNH and areas for further improvement. They will also judge the service on a three-star rating system. It is likely the report and rating will be released in May 2010 and we’ll let you know as soon as we can what the results are.

Working with customers, we’ve come a long way. Some of the service improvements made since CNH launched in December 2007 are:

• The introduction of the freephone 0800 6335548 phone number for rents enquiries.
• Producing a comprehensive new repairs handbook for all tenants. New tenants’ handbook and the leaseholders’ handbook have also been provided to all tenants.
• Increasing rent collection performance from 98.09% in 2007/08 to 98.94% in 2008/09, achieving the highest performance for over 5 years in Charnwood.
• Improving repairs performance: the percentage of urgent repairs completed within government timescales has increased from 92.40% in 2007/08 to 100% in June 2009 and the average time taken to complete non-urgent repairs has reduced from 19.6 days in 2007/8 to 10.24 days in June 2009. The % of responsive repairs for which appointments made and kept has increased from 76.26% in 2007/08 to 100% in June 2009.
• Establishment of Tenant Representative Group to bring together representatives from all our tenant forums/groups. The group is used as a sounding board for all CNH policies and service delivery developments.

We’ll keep you up to date on the inspection here and in the next issue of CNH News.

Inspection 2010 will be a huge opportunity to improve Charnwood and with your help we believe we can make a difference.

If you have any questions about Inspection 2010, phone Maria Maltby on 01509 632578 or email maria.maltby@cnh.org.uk